Book of Remembrances: Further Information about the Partial Release

Blog article published by Suzanne Trill on 30 May 2023  TEIdigital edition

Our ultimate aim with this project is to produce an interactive and fully searchable edition of all four of Alice Thornton’s Books that will be available to read in both modernised and semi-diplomatic versions, either separately or side-by side.

As one of the steps toward meeting that goal — in collaboration with our partners at King’s Digital Lab — we have transformed the first twenty-two pages of our text-encoded files of Alice Thornton’s Book of Remembrances into a sample version for you to explore.

As illustrated in our news item, this version demonstrates how we plan to display the texts and offers the opportunity to view the sample pages in either modernised or semi-diplomatic format.

There are several other features of this version to which we’d like to draw your attention (navigation, tagging, annotations, images, editorial principles); while doing so, we will also note where further functionality will become available in later versions of the edition.

Navigation

In this version, the navigation bar enables you to switch between different versions of the text (i.e., modernised or semi-diplomatic). It is also possible to either read consecutively (via the next and previous buttons) or to jump to a specific page via a drop-down menu.

As the editions of the other volumes become available, you will be able to access them via the drop-down menu on the far left of the image above.

Tagging

The names of all people and places have been tagged, which is indicated by a dotted line under the relevant words.

Biblical references and allusions have also been tagged in a similar way.

In all cases, although the current tooltip/pop-up provides brief information, in later versions, when the associated linked data goes live, further information will become available via a clickable link.

Annotations

Where we have provided some form of editorial annotation, these are indicated in-text by numbers and the associated information appears in a pop-up.

There are currently two different types of annotation: contextual, as illustrated above, and glosses (i.e., definitions of archaic or obsolete words).

Images

Although we are not in a position to reproduce individual images of every page of the manuscripts, we plan to include five images from each volume to provide a sense of their materiality. This sample includes two images (with the kind permission of the Chapter of Durham Cathedral), and their presence is indicated by a camera icon at the top left of the viewing page.

Editorial Principles

We anticipate that the two different versions of Thornton’s Books (modernised and semi-diplomatic) will be of interest primarily to different audiences.

The modernised version is intended to make Thornton’s writing as accessible as possible without completely eroding the sense of her voice and character.

With the exception of regularising u/v, i/j and the long s, the semi-diplomatic version retains Thornton’s own spelling, punctuation, and layout as far as possible. This includes indicating on the page where a word or phrase has been inserted (by placing it in superscript) or has been deleted by crossing out. It also means that there are several occasions where part of a word, at the beginning or end of a line, may contain an unexpected hyphen.

Thornton is writing pre-standardised English, so her original spelling can seem somewhat erratic to a modern reader. However, we have retained her practice in this version as it is of interest to those who study historical linguistics.

As both the modernised and the semi-diplomatic versions of the sample pages are now available, for now, we have not drawn attention to all the changes we have made in the modernised version. However, in due course, we will publish our editorial principles for both versions of the text in full.

Under Development

As there is only one text available, it is obviously not yet possible to compare Thornton’s account of the same event in different books.

In addition, there are two main areas that need further development: the search functions and the connections to linked data.

So, for now, you are unable to search the full text. Although there are brief notes on people and places, and biblical references are currently supplied, the further information that is contained in the linked data is not yet available.

So, this is very much a work-in-progress; however, we very much hope you like what you see, and we look forward to your feedback.

Please email us on alicethorntonsbooks@gmail.com with your thoughts.